Hall of Famer John Smoltz shares story on pitching full-speed to Tiger Woods

If Tiger Woods wasn’t a golfer, what would he be? Well, probably not a baseball player.

Former longtime Atlanta Braves pitcher and baseball Hall of Famer John Smoltz joined Joe Buck and Michael Collins on ESPN’s broadcast of the PGA Championship, and gave fans that were up early Saturday morning a treat with a story about Woods hitting against him in batting practice.

“He wanted to hit against me. I said, ‘Tiger, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I’m not worried about hitting you, I’m just worried about you jamming a thumb.’ He said, ‘I’m not worried at all, I want the best stuff you got.’ We worked it out on a day where no one was there, the team was on the road, so it was my work day,” Smoltz said. “Brian McCann was catching and the umpire, and I was pitching. He took BP up in the cage, he came out and Tiger is a really good athlete. We played ping pong.”

Woods, the ultimate competitor, will tell you that he has a hit over one of the Braves’ all-time greats in batting practice. Though, if you ask Smoltz, that’s putting it politely.

“When he got to the field and was ready to rock n’roll, he didn’t want me to lay off the gas,” Smoltz said. “As he puts it, he went 1-for-4 with a walk, he hit a dribbler behind the mound that he declared a base hit.”

It’s no knock on Woods that he couldn’t get an actual base hit on Smoltz, in fact, professional baseball players had a hard time getting a hit off the former Cy Young winner and eight-time MLB All-Star. He struck out over 3,000 batters in his career, so Woods shouldn’t feel too bad.

“It would be like me jumping in a major and expecting to make the cut,” he said. “Impossible.”